After his death, Steichen's farm was made into a park, known as Topstone Park.

Redding's Topstone Park offers a beach and swimming pond, horseback riding, canoeing, hiking and basketball on 280 acres at $80 for families, $35 for individuals.

An upper 'topstone' and middle 'wallstone' seam of flint was dug through on the way to the deeper third 'floorstone' seam which most interested the miners.

There was a rubber Halloween mask manufactured by Topstone, and a chalkware statue of the character was issued by Artrix Products in 1951.

So it was that a 6,580-yard 18-hole golf course, named Topstone for a onetime wholesale tobacco customer in Bridgeport, was built and then opened for business last summer on the site.

Ultimately, the course was designed by a Maine golf course architect, Al Zikorus, who also did some of the design on Topstone in South Windsor before he died a few years ago.

A 10-figure set of carnival chalkware statues of Dogpatch characters was manufactured by Artrix Products in 1951, and Topstone introduced a line of 16 rubber Halloween masks prior to 1960.

Allegra's Window was taped at Nickelodeon Studios in Orlando at Universal Studios, Florida, and was produced by Topstone Productions & Jumbo Pictures.'

The higher walls were constructed of Slat and Topstone, and in descending order, the lower walls were made of stone layers found naturally in Portland quarries, Roach, Whitbed and Basebed.

By contrast, before work began on the Topstone course, hundreds of trees had to removed from an area that covered about 40 percent of the projected course, said Joseph Kelley, a part owner of Topstone.

The line bisects the southern half of the town, running generally north of West Lane, across the north end of the village, past the south end of Great Swamp and generally easterly into Redding in the Topstone area.

While Topstone and Rolling Meadows have been built and are already getting a considerable amount of use, and more than a half-dozen other courses are being expanded, plans are afoot to build about six more courses in Connecticut, which now has nearly 200 private and public courses overall.